Friday, 12 December 2014

DIY | Paper Craft Christmas Trees

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

Ray Bradbury

Up until I started blogging I would have listed arts and crafts as my biggest hobby. Art and crafts was always my thing. Whilst I still love drawing and trying my hand at different crafts, it has admittedly fallen to the wayside as I've spent more time writing. That being said, I still love arts and crafts and I would love to incorporate that more into my blog. It feels like it's a big part of me that I've never really talked about here. So yeah, I've decided I'm going to change that! And what better time to do that than Christmas?

So I figured my first arts and crafts post would be a DIY Christmas decoration! My mum's been getting really into paper crafts and found a tutorial online for awesome Christmas trees made out of old books or magazines. I thought they looked fun and decided to have a go, too.

Step one is obvious. Pick which magazine or book you want to use. I did two trees. For one I used the Marie Claire magazine and the other I used a paperback book called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. On one of the tutorials I read it said you only needed about thirty pages. However, I personally like them thicker. I used the whole magazine and for the book I used about three quarters.

I haven't done it yet here, but first you remove the cover of the magazine or book. Then begin with the first page.

Fold down the top corner of the page, lining it with the spine of the magazine or book.

Okay, I'm not really sure how to explain this. Basically fold the folded edge against spine of the book again. Like making a paper aeroplane.

You'll be left with a little triangle that hangs over the edge at the bottom of the book. I first fold that back and smooth along the edge before folding it the opposite way and tucking it up between the two layers if that makes sense.

So you're left with a clean edge and a folded triangle like the one below. Then proceed to do the same for the first of the pages or as many as you feel necessary.

You end up with trees like these. On the left you can see the magazine tree and on the right is the book tree. I really like them both. Now they're ready for decoration!

I got some things together to decorate my trees. I was really looking forward to this part. I wanted to use buttons to look like baubles. I also collected some wrappers from Roses sweets, but I didn't actually end up using them. My mum made this red star from a star from Christmas tree lights. She painted it red with nail varnish and then put gold glittery nail varnish over that. The little Christmas tree stickers are some Christmas wrapping embellishments I got last year from Paperchase.

And this is what I ended up with! I have to admit, it was a little hard to get things to stick to them because of the gaps. At first I used double sided tape to stick the buttons on, but they kept falling off. So I tried using PVA. They stuck a little better, but I foresee some falling off sooner or later. I think the buttons might have more of a chance of staying on if I'd used my glue gun, but I've run out of glue sticks for it. I made a paper chain out of old Christmas wrapping paper for the magazine tree and just stuck the little wrapping embellishments on it. I thought the colours went really well with it. So yeah, I was really happy with the finished product. I think they look really nice sitting on my desk. I'm not sure which is my favourite. I do love anything with buttons, so possibly that one. I think it might keep a little better for next year too, as I think the paper chain will end up tearing on the other.

Because mine were so thick, they stayed together okay. However if you want to do less pages, you may need to glue the first and last page together.

Also, if you're interested in other or less festive paper crafts, my mum also made this adorable hedgehog for me. It was actually the first thing she made. This one is a little more useful as you can use it to store your hair pins or paper clips, which also doubles as the hedgehog's prickles! I think it's just adorable.

So yeah, this is my first DIY craft post! I hope you enjoyed it and I explained it okay. If I didn't, I'm sure there are YouTube tutorials or something that may explain it better. I had a lot of fun making them, and I'm sure you will too. Just a small suggestion though, be careful if you display them near candles or anything. Common sense, but still worth mentioning.

I hope to do more posts like this in the new year, and more posts about arts and crafts in general. If you have any things you recommend I try, I'm all ears. In the mean time I'll leave you with more lovely photos of my Christmas trees.

Thank you! They were a lot of fun to make. Oh, that sounds awesome. I hope you take pics! We're hoping to do some baking on Christmas Eve. Biscuits, I think. But I'd love to do cupcakes. They're my favourite. :) xo

Howdy, I'm Sara but most call me Bloo. I'm 28 and live in N. Ireland. Here and on YouTube (link), you'll find a wide variety of topics relating to my life, my pets (meet them here!), my hobbies and living with Muscular Dystrophy. Aside from animals, I enjoy arts, crafts and reading. Thanks for stopping by!